Ba-Ba-Reeba! Is eating supposed to be this fun?!

If you were wondering where to have your next date/group dinner/dinner with a friend, look no further than Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’ Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! Conveniently located only a hop, skip and a jump away from Steppenwolf Theatre at 2024 N. Halstead, I thought Ruthie and I would give this place a try before we headed over to see Fake.

Since I was not sure if we were going to be terribly hungry or just go for drinks before our girl’s night out, I made reservations at Ba-Ba-Reeba through Open Table, a .com site that lets me make reservations for free online (I hate calling reservations in!).

As soon as we made our way to the restaurant, we decided to sit outside. The wait staff is uber-friendly, almost alarmingly so, as they made cheery, direct conversation. They showed us to a patio table and our waitress gave us a thorough explanation of the menu since it was our first time. She told us that the sangria was a favourite and that she recommended the black raspberry. Ruthie ordered the classic red sangria which had a deep, fruity taste and bitter aroma. My black raspberry was definitely more mild but had a tangy aftertaste.

Since Ba-Ba is known for its tapas, Ruthie and I thought we could not go wrong by ordering a few…errr…a lot. We ordered the above, or the short-rib stuffed piquillo pepper on toast. I am used to tasting a million different ingredients, but this pintxos did not need much to make it good. It practically melted in your mouth.

Bacon-wrapped dates

Ruthie tried the bacon-wrapped dates while I marveled at the fact that Ba-Ba had a local dish! Yes, they had a Green City Market special…wood oven roasted cauliflower with capers and onions! It only appears on their weekly menu until Sept. 23rd, but I thought it was cool that they tried to incorporate local ingredients for those of us in the Locavore Challenge!

Read more…click below!

Just in case the first part of this post did not make you salivate, feast your eyes on the pintxos above: Roasted apple toast with cured duck and zucchini toast with Manchego cheese. At this point, we pretty much were in love with the fact that a constant stream of food was arriving at our table, all in bite-size portions or things we could share. The waitstaff kept our waters (and sangrias!) filled to the brim and came by regularly to see how everything was.

With a mouth full of food, I gave muffled praise and pointed to the next thing I wanted on the menu.

The patio of Ba-Ba-Reeba

Our dinner came to an end after we ordered the roasted potatoes with tomato aioli and the skewered beef with horseradish cream. You get a lot of potatoes, so make sure to share among the table. They really are delicious, but if you are in the mood to eat a lot of different things, I would not recommend them. Unfortunately, they fill you up quickly and I had to retire shortly after.

But wait! There is dessert! We ordered the cherry bread pudding (above), which was nicely balance with moist cinnamony bread pudding studded with tart cherries, bathing in a sweet cherry puree and garnished with a tiny scoop of house-made vanilla ice cream!

I ordered two desserts: the carmelised bananas with pistachios sprinkled on top and the oh-so-heavenly tres leches chocolate cake. The cake was so stodgy and moist that when you went to cut it with your fork, chocolate milks ran from the nooks and crannies, pooling on the plate. If I could suggest only one dessert, it would be the one you see below!